Three Israeli men who worked at the Allenby Bridge crossing between Jordan and the occupied West Bank were shot dead at the facility on Sunday by a Jordanian lorry driver who got out of his vehicle and opened fire.
The assailant, a 36-year-old Bedouin, was shot and killed by security guards at the scene. Israel closed two other crossings into Jordan following the incident.
Israeli security sources have reported a spike in recent months in attempts by Iran to smuggle arms into the West Bank via Jordan. The Hashemite kingdom signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 but hostile anti-Israel protests have taken place during the 11-month Gaza war.
“Israel is surrounded by a murderous ideology led by Iran’s axis of evil. In recent days, despicable terrorists have murdered six of our hostages in cold blood and three Israeli police officers,” prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting. “The murderers do not distinguish between us, they want to murder us all, until the last one; right and left, secular and religious, Jews and non-Jews.”
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There is growing pessimism from all sides over prospects for a breakthrough towards a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal even though Washington continues to work on formulating updated bridging proposals. No decision has been made on if and when to make a final draft public. US administration officials fear that a “take it or leave it” deal would be rejected by both sides, creating a foreign policy humiliation that would harm Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
CIA director William Burns said over the weekend that a Gaza deal was “ultimately a question of political will,” adding that he “profoundly” hopes leaders on both sides will do a deal.
But the political will from both Mr Netanyahu and Hamas leader in Gaza Yaha Sinwar appears elusive.
The Washington Post reported over the weekend that Hamas has added last-minute demands relating to the details of any prisoner swap, with a US official describing the addition as “a poison pill”. Over recent weeks Mr Netanyahu insisted that Israel must maintain a military presence on the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt-a demand that mediators warned could torpedo a deal.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested over the weekend demanding the government end the Gaza war and bring the hostages home, with many accusing Mr Netanyahu of preferring to stay in power rather than sign a deal which could lead to two far-right parties quitting his coalition. Organisers claimed the main protest, in Tel Aviv, drew a crowd of 400,000.
With fighting in Gaza continuing in a number of locations, the deputy director of the Gaza civil emergency service and four members of his family were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house in Jabalia on northern Gaza on Sunday, according to Gaza health officials.
The civil emergency service said 83 of its members have been killed by Israel during the war.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, almost 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began on October 7th. Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 253 hostages seized in the surprise Hamas attack on that day. More than 60 living hostages, and the bodies of about 35 others taken captive but believed to be dead, are still in Gaza, according to the Israeli authorities.
Israeli troops withdrew from the northern West Bank over the weekend after 10 days of continuous fighting, during which, according to the Israeli military, 36 militants were killed and 46 arrested.
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